


Reading Rainbow

by isoldembd



Series: Free time [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 04:57:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15041216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoldembd/pseuds/isoldembd
Summary: When Sam escapes in a book.





	Reading Rainbow

Sam thinks if he were to die right now in this very moment, and someone were to calculate the amount of time he has spent in the library or reading a book throughout his entire life, it would amount to about 85%. And honestly, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Reading has always been the only true escape from his so-called ‘life’ that he leads, running around killing and mourning and worrying and crying. When the ugly shows its face at your door, knocks three times where you rest your head, it’s hard to ignore it anymore. But when he cracks the spine of a dusty and stained book, it’s like every awful thing that has ever happened to him didn’t and now he can just _be_. He can just sit and read words lined up in such a way that it unlocks a portal to a different, better universe.

When Dean is out doing what he does and Cas is out doing what _he_ does, Sam meanders down to the public library and goes straight for the Young Adult Fiction section. As a young adult, he was never allowed to read things that didn’t have immediate pertinence to a case, so he always found himself craving the misadventures of some unfortunate teenagers squeezed in between a paper cover. He was never able to run away from this hunting life, this murder and sadness, so instead he runs away with his temporary friends.

And it’s nice. It’s nice to pick up a book that was written in this century, whose pages aren’t made of dried human flesh and whose letters aren’t written in blood. Whose sentences tell of romance and the need for a different life instead of A Thousand Ways to Kill a Demon. It’s exhausting, and soul-ripping, to constantly have to make room for the New and Improved horrible thing he has to kill dead. For a short time, when he’s scrunched up in a creaky wooden chair, elbows resting impolitely against a creaky wooden table, he can think about freedom and happiness with no consequence, no strings attached. He can laugh and not look over his shoulder, he can mourn and not sell his soul. It’s the simplicity, the purity, of reading fiction that Sam turns to in times of comfort. Nowhere else in the world do you get to disappear from yourself with no repercussions, with no one putting out an APB for you, no brothers hunting down the monster with the most info, no angels cursing their fathers for leaving them without a friend. It’s all okay. Sam can sneak out the backdoor of life and no alarms go off because everyone knows he will return to reality in a day.

When he finishes his book and returns it neatly back to its cubby on a dusty shelf, and he eases on down the road back to his family, he feels the weight on his shoulders get a little lighter. It’s not a permanent solution, he knows this, but it’s nice to return to childhood for a few hours, a childhood he never got to experience. He claps his unawares brother on the shoulder, head still filled with small towns and even smaller loves, simple solutions and simple friendships, and he smiles.

Only sometimes does it take the fiction of everyday life to remember that the life you lead is the one meant for you and your story will end where it must. Somewhere Sam knows another stuck and sorrowed kid is using his life as an escape from their own tortures. If his life means anything, being a character in a book is a good way to live if only to help someone else slip out their backdoor and far far away.


End file.
